


Puppeteer

by TheKiwiBird



Series: New Detroit AU (Portal / Half Life AU) [1]
Category: Portal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cute things involving children, Gen, New Detroit AU, Portal - Freeform, Portal 2 - Freeform, Portal 2 AU, Set pre-Portal 1, Warning: Cuteness overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKiwiBird/pseuds/TheKiwiBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Portal 1 fic, set in my "New Detroit" AU setting. An engineer takes his work outside his office, and finds an unusual admirer of his work. He then proceeds to do his best to further impress her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puppeteer

**Author's Note:**

> This...may or may not have been inspired by the "Final Hours" segment wherein they talk about how Wheatley was designed by a long-time Muppet puppeteer. All in all, I wrote this to escape the dreary nature of Seventh Circle, and it ended up adding to the actual canon of the story so. Here it is. Enjoy.

He needed to see the outside. He wasn’t sure why.

Nathan Spurling spent all his days either taking a five minute power nap, at his piano playing concertos while reading the daily memos, or building the metal shells for his project’s work. He felt a strong urge to see the wheat growing outside for some weird reason.

To remind him that there was a world outside, maybe? Why, really?

He took the half-finished shell of his personal pride and joy with him. He had decided to align the gears and motors to shut its optic and move all its little parts and handlebars. He’d freshly polished its vibrant blue optic and had decided to finally install the backlight after much fussing from Girard to see it with ‘all the shimmering’, as he put it. 

Little Mr. Girard was hard to comprehend when you were treating him with someone who wasn’t completely out of his mind and only thinking stable thoughts on anti-psychotics...not that it had ever bothered Nathan much. He was stable enough to do his team job, which actually tended to benefit from his colorful and abstract dialogue.

He thought of the future a lot when he worked on the core shells; having a family, a kid (a real one, not just him treating his metallic machines like little children), maybe leaving this bloody prison and maybe moving back home to Dundry.

Oh no, not there. Maybe he could move to another state, like Maine or Vermont. Something like home without all the reminders of home.

Something short and black-topped darted in and out of his peripheral view amongst the tables and chairs. He looked up, setting the winch and screwdriver down.

Whatever it was, it had seemed to haven gone. Probably some sort of mutated yet harmless bug having sprung loose from the biology lab again.

A soft sound to his right side made his head shoot over. Last thing he needed was for the bug to be carn-

...It was a girl.

What was it with these kids coming to bug him all the time while he was in the lounge? A little boy had stood next to him, looking up at him as he stared out the window last time. Aislin, that walking crystal ball of a girl, kept invading his office and doom-spouting, and now this little girl, about 8 or so, long black hair in a ponytail in a plain orange teeshirt and blue jeans, sitting next to him in a chair, looking at the construct on the table, ever so politely and silently.

“Oh. Hello.”

The sound of his voice drew her eyes upward. She looked nervous. Was she interested in his machine?

“You can sit here, go ahead. Just don’t...touch anything.”

She got more comfortable in the chair, a warm smile on her face. Silently observing his tinkering, he was unsure what she was up to. Children were inherently sneaky and thieving little germ-covered monsters...which made him question his fleeting thoughts of reproducing. Disgusting little smelly things...

This one wasn’t too bad. The ones in the complex tended to be much better behaved than their outside counterparts, as a whole, and while this one didn’t seem to fully understand personal space and privacy, she was quiet and observant and polite and not thieving.

What was she so interested in, that she seemed to be so quiet? Children were never this still and quiet; was she waiting for something to happen?

Something stirred and tugged within him, he wasn’t sure what. He looked up from his work and looked back at the girl for a moment, who was looking intently into the machine’s optic lens. If she stuck a single finger on it, so help her...

An idea clicked in his mind, and he reached inside the back panel, and he flicked the switch to the backlight.

She jumped and gasped, making him grin.

“Oh, I think you woke him up.”

She looked a little scared.

“Oh, he’s a friendly robot, not like that big one out there, it’s okay...”

She gave it a wary look; he had to act fast. The various gears could be roughly moved trough a simple manual manipulation...he’d have to do the voice himself, of course, but a quick hand over the mouth might fool the girl.

A few tweaks inside with his fingers, and the optic covers moved slightly like eyelids, and he made the upper handlebar twitch like an eyebrow. He was certain that it looked terrible to any person who studied how faces worked, but the girl was amused and bewildered.

He leaned his hand into his palm, and quickly tried a more American sort of accent.

“Well hello there...”

She gave a disappointed look; his American accent was smashingly terrible, after all. It had always come out in a horrible twanging similar to something from the Deep South, if that person had never spoken a word in their life.

He cleared his throat and went back to his own voice, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice.

“Oi oi! Sorry there, luv. Voice box malfunction.”

She laughed. The combination of his rudimentary manual construct movements and his own voice seemed to do the trick. He bobbed the inner core a bit on its axis, and made the optic panels open and close, as if blinking.

“Good morning! You’re a wee scientist, aren’t you? Can’t find a proper sized lab coat, either, can you?” He made the optic gesture towards himself, as if mocking his own “proper height, improper build” lab coat.

“Now now, they’re all issued in one size; can’t go around tailoring lab coats for everyone here. There’s Science to be done!” Mock scolding the construct made the girl giggle, too; easily amused, apparently.

Covering his mouth again, he made the construct look back at the girl. “That’s right! Say, you’re one of the scientist’s kids, aren’t ya?” She nodded yes. “What’s your name? Maybe I’ve met your mom or dad!”

She blushed and looked down, trying to hide her face. Either she was shy, or her parents told her not to tell anyone her name, and either way, he was just going to bypass the query and continue.

“My name is...Mr. Gibbous! I’m a part of the Lunar Colonization Initiative being put together by a brilliant team of robotics experts, like my friend Nathan here!”

Nathan moved his free hand away from his mouth to wave, then put it back.

“Do you know all the phases of the moon, little girl?” She nodded yes as one of the Science Education Room employees stomped in. He knew playtime was over once he noticed the woman glaring at the back of the little girl’s head.

“CHELL!”

The girl jumped, turning white as a sheet, her eyes widening, her pupils shrinking to little dots. She leapt fromt he chair and took to hide from the woman behind Nathan. He turned off the construct’s backlight and pulled his hand out while turning to face the woman.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spurling. This one’s got me running around looking for her again.” The woman glared daggers at the girl, and something tugged in his chest again.

“Oh, it’s alright. She’s fine here. No trouble at all. She’s been a little angel.”

The tugging seemed to dull, but it did not fade. What was it that was bothering him? His body inched farther forwards in the chair, as if preparing to leap out in front of the girl.

“This one manages to get out of the room the second you stop staring at her. This time, it was the air vents, and somehow she fashioned a screwdriver out of a piece of scrap metal.”

“Resourceful one, she is, heh. Maybe she just wanted to look outside?”

“We brought her outside last week. She thought playing hide-and-seek in her new yellow shirt through the fields was funny.”

Nathan resisted laughing, giving a very small snort while perfectly maintaining a straight face. Not only was she a terrible troublemaker, but she was amusingly talented at it.

A familiar head poked in from the doorway; Girard was wandering around again, and his impeccable timing brought him right to Nathan when he needed him again. There had to be some cosmic alarm system alerting Girard to whenever he was in need of his sunny demeanor and disarming nature.

“Hey, what’s going on, Nate? Is everything alright?” Girard walked in, surveying the area. The girl’s eyes lit up when she spotted him, and she dashed over to him. “Hey, trouble! Looking for me?”

She nodded rapidly, then pointed to Nathan.

“Oh, you found Nate and his robot I told you about? Isn’t it cool?”

She nodded rapidly again.

“I know what you really want, though.”

She bounced on her feet.

“You gotta make me a promise, though. You can’t keep breaking out of the room, or I won’t give you any more, okay?” She nodded, looking a little ashamed. “I’ll come once a week with some for you, and only you, okay?” She nodded. “Promise?” She nodded yes so hard, Nathan thought her head would pop off. “Okay.”

He handed her a bag with a little drawing of a cat leaping over the moon. She smiled and hugged him, then turned and ran over to Nathan. She hugged Nathan briefly, then leaned over and waved goodbye to the optic before walking to the woman who, ever since Girard walked in, had calmed down considerably.

“Thank you Mr. Morgenstern, again.”

“Hey, no probs!”

As the two left, Girard smiled and took the seat next to him where the girl sat. “You’re quite the pied piper, eh Nathan?”

“Don’t start.”

“Just think, if this whole Personality Core thing fails, you can go to the children’s wing and be the most successful puppeteer Science has ever seen.”

Nathan growled. That’s the exact opposite of what he wanted...


End file.
